Doncaster

The road made Doncaster rich: by 1334 it was the wealthiest town in southern Yorkshire and the sixth in the county, with a banker of its own. Franciscan friars settled here in 1307 and Carmelites followed, and travellers crossed the Don by a five-arched stone bridge that carried a chapel of Our Lady. The Black Death cut the townspeople to about 1,500, and recovery was slow. The road also brought the troubles of the north to the town's door. In October 1536 some 30,000 to 40,000 men of the Pilgrimage of Grace, risen under the lawyer Robert Aske against Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, gathered near Doncaster, and it was here that the Duke of Norfolk came to treat with them.